What Is The Attraction?

Member

Serious question. I'm not putting anyone down, judging or anything like that, but I just don't get it. What is it about pro wrestling that is so engaging? The showmanship? The scripted matches? The scantily clad women? To me, it all comes across as a testosterone filled soap opera.

I am a big fan of the NFL by the way, so it's not like I'm not into the physical and somewhat violent aspect of it. The NFL has plenty.

Active Member

Wrestling's not for everyone, just like Marvel's movies or Basketball or comedy's are for everyone.

Being able to just enjoy the show as a production and not constantly going "Yea well, it's fake anyway so who cares" is a big part of being able to get into it. It's a weird aspect that wrestling gets flack for, given that we don't look at The Dark Knight and think "Oh, yea well it's fake anyway it's not like Batman is ACTUALLY beating up the Joker". But a lot of people give that criticism to wrestling and just turn it off.

I think the fact that it's scripted is actually a big lure for it, because that gives the freedom and potential for the matches to be much more exciting than any other sport. I don't care for UFC/MMA or Football or Basketball or anything else. The main reason is because most of the time, I find them all boring as hell. They've all had their moments, I've seen super intense football games that were awesome for example, but most of the time it's just...not. UFC especially - most of the time it feels like the fights are just posturing and defense and then someone grounds the other and they squirm around a bit, occasionally nailing a strike. Once in a while there's something exciting, but most of the time that's how it feels to me. And that's boring.

Whereas in wrestling, because they're actually working together to put on a show instead of truly trying to beat each other, there's a lot more back and forth and diversity in the match. You get stories behind matches a lot of times - sometimes they suck, but oftentimes you can at least understand why people are fighting and that helps to get emotionally invested in what's going on.

I would suggest watching NXT if you want to try wrestling out. It's still under the WWE umbrella, but it's basically their own "training promotion" if you will. They develop a lot of home grown talent there, but they also bring in skilled and experienced wrestlers from all over the world and that's typically what the actual shows focus on is the folks who know what they're doing.

This Saturday is a big NXT show, it's called NXT Takeover: Chicago II - It starts at 8PM eastern, should be around 2 maybe 3 hours. It's all killer no filler. NXT is really a prime example of the best aspects of pro wrestling - main WWE with Raw and Smackdown has good stuff, but it's designed to try to appeal to a much wider audience. NXT is aimed more at hardcore wrestling fans, and as such the fans in attendance are typically much more vocal and involved, and the match styles are a bit different. It's wonderful.

If you wanted to watch that, you can do a free trial to the WWE Network for a month and watch it. You can even sign up and then watch it later since it's an on demand video service.

New Member

You know, that was really good explanation Zach. I never really looked at scripted sports being more entertaining than non-scripted, for the reasons you gave, but I can see the appeal that some people have for it.